Desolation Road (Torpedo Ink 4)

He’d made a few mistakes over the years. Holden was one, but he couldn’t really complain as he’d made quite a lot of his money from the repulsive man. It had been that one case he could never quite get out of his mind, that one blunder that preyed on him even now after his retirement. Scarlet Foley. She’d been a brilliant girl. Far more intelligent than Holden’s weak-willed, entitled son. Holden had paid through the nose time and again to keep the psychopath he’d raised out of jail. Scarlet had been on her way to do great things; with her intelligent mind, she grasped concepts quickly.

Even at the very young age of seventeen, it was clear she understood what was happening, the lies and railroading going on. She had looked at her attorney and had known he was rolling over for Holden. She had looked at Calloway with those same too-intelligent eyes as well. He hadn’t wanted to send her to prison, but at the time, there had been a Picasso he had needed more than his self-respect and he didn’t yet have his art addiction under control. She had been the catalyst for him to find a way to stop his obsessive need to continually buy paintings. He’d slowed down after he had taken Holden’s outrageous payout for sending an innocent teenager to prison.

She was a fighter. He would never forget that look she gave him. Steady. Those green eyes sometimes woke him up in the middle of the night, staring straight into his eyes. Intelligent. Knowing. It had been a terrible shame about her sister. He knew Holden’s pitiful son and his friends had raped her and driven her to suicide. Foley’s parents dead, murder-suicide that same night? That was awful.

Calloway sighed as he poured himself a glass of one of his favorite red wines. Two thousand dollars a bottle. He rarely opened that particular wine, but tonight he was going to listen to his very favorite Italian opera and sit in that room surrounded by his beloved paintings and let them take Scarlet Foley with her brilliant green eyes away so he wouldn’t wake up the way he did whenever he thought too much about her.

She’d gotten out of prison, a female attorney had suddenly taken on her case, advocating for her, turning everything around, and Holden couldn’t bribe her or scare her into giving up. She had uncovered the fact that the medical evidence had supported Scarlet’s account, not Robert Jr.’s account. Somehow, she had found all kinds of facts that turned up evidence no one wanted to come to light, including his part in the entire mess. Scarlet’s incarceration was over, and the city paid her money to keep her quiet. Holden was furious.

Calloway was very happy he had been allowed to retire with his pension. Scarlet left the country and disappeared. Calloway didn’t blame her at the time. He had been afraid for her safety. Robert Jr. was a little pissant who would definitely target her again. She’d bested him and he couldn’t take that. Now, her attorney had bested his father. She hadn’t brought a civil suit against him, but it was hanging over Holden Sr.’s and Jr.’s heads and everyone knew it.

Fast-forward five years, Scarlet returned and moved a couple of hundred miles away, got a job as a librarian, minded her own business, and one by one, some killer murders the little pissant and his friends and Holden is absolutely convinced it’s Foley. It didn’t matter that the police investigated her thoroughly over and over at Holden’s insistence and cleared her repeatedly until her attorney insisted it was harassment. Or that Holden got the Feds involved, and they cleared her, paving the way for her attorney to finally bring an enormous lawsuit against him.

Holden was positive that somehow Scarlet could be in two places at one time. Calloway had studied the photographs of the crime scenes. Scarlet wasn’t a large woman. How could she have managed to kill three strong men even if she had found a way to be in two places at one time? He’d tried to talk to Holden once, but of course that man wouldn’t listen. He knew everything, more than all the investigators. More than everyone. Now, he’d put a hit out on her. That was so like Holden. Things weren’t going to end well either way and Calloway had distanced himself as best he could.

He slid open the door in the wall so cleverly hidden in the panels among all the intricate white cork sculpturing on the walls. It was quite breathtaking and all his friends had gotten up close to view the exquisite artistry, yet none had spotted the hidden door within the panel that slid inside the wall to allow him to enter the stairs leading down to his viewing room. He loved showing the beautiful walls in his home, each one a masterpiece all on its own, this one hiding a spectacular secret and millions of dollars’ worth of precious artwork.